


Hope and All That

by millari



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Friendship/Love, Gen, Past Relationship(s), Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-01
Updated: 2013-08-01
Packaged: 2017-12-22 03:22:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/908307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millari/pseuds/millari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is the 74th Hunger Games and Johanna Mason and Finnick Odair have just agreed to start spying on the Capitol for District 13. Only Johanna's not sure why she said yes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hope and All That

**Author's Note:**

> References to forced prostitution.
> 
> Written in response to a prompt for The Hunger Games Comment Ficathon [The Odds Are Never In Our Favor](http://jada-jasmine.livejournal.com/27141.html?nc=87#comments)

“We're spies, you know,” Finnick says out of nowhere, like the realization's just hit him. It breaks the silence settling in between him and Johanna in the small, dark room. “That's what we've become – the enemies I've read about in my history textbook in school. I'm a traitor to my country now.” 

He goes silent, like's he contemplating this new identity. “Do you really think they ate children in District 13 during the Dark Days?” he asks. “I mean, is that who we're getting involved with here?” 

Johanna snorts. “You saw Heavensbee the same as I did. Do you honestly think he could catch one?” 

The choked laugh comes out of him like a teenager learning to blow a smoke ring. “Point, Jo." The short, no-nonsense response makes him sound quintessentially himself - the real Finnick that she knows, not the one he shows every year to the Capitol cameras. 

They are waiting in an utterly drab room for the man himself – _a fucking Gamesmaker_ – to make an appearance and collect their bits of information: how many of their clients, their stylists, their fans who come up to them for autographs, are sympathizing with Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark? Who among their more powerful clients have they managed to manipulate into advocating a rules change? Who among the victors have they talked to about the cause? 

Johanna kind of knows what Finnick means, though. What do they really know about District 13? A week ago, Johanna thought that everyone there was dead, their population obliterated by nuclear weapons. Now, in the space of one Hunger Games training week, she has become the member of a ghost race which doesn't officially exist. When she must (which is practically every damned moment of the day during this time of the year), she speaks the easy, fluffy language of the Capitolites like a foreigner moving among the natives with a flawless, undetectable accent. She hints at questions, she implants opinions, she collects intelligence, feeling like a pretender on all fronts. She has no purpose of her own. 

“Why _are_ we doing this?” she asks her best friend. Truth be told, they weren't really given enough time to think Heavensbee's proposal through. One day they were standing in Flickerman's studios with their tributes, watching a cursed, no-chance baker boy distraction from Twelve declare his love on stage for his utterly boring district partner, to mysteriously ecstatic crowds. Then it seemed like barely a millisecond had passed before Katniss and Peeta were on every fucking news channel, every talk show, just fucking everywhere. And only another millisecond before Johanna and her best friend (no, her only friend) were sitting in actress Secretia Colbert's penthouse apartment, with Plutarch Heavensbee informing them that no, they weren't going to have their scheduled threesome after all; or at least not _that_ kind of threesome. They were going to help change the fate of the so-called Star-Crossed Lovers, so that one day it might change the fate of everything. For the better, he had added, as if in some subconscious part of him, he knew there were doubts to be had about that notion. Johanna had wondered about it in that flicker of a moment, and then it was gone, it was done. She had somehow become a spy, a shiny, brand-new kind of traitor to her country. 

In retrospect, Johanna can't remember the moment when she or Finn actually agreed to do this. But then, years of victorhood have kind of gotten them out of the habit of making any decisions, she guesses, so it's easy to see how it happened.

“Why?” Finnick is still paused at her question, as if he really needs to think to come up with an answer. “I dunno, hope?” He sounds so unsure. 

“Fucking Odair,” is all she says in return. She accompanies it with a vicious grin, like she's just dealt him one of her typically tasteless, blunt jabs to his ego. But his answer hurts. Because she sure as fuck already can't remember _why_ she agreed to do this, but she knows it wasn't about hope. Hope isn't something Johanna Mason gets to have. Hope is for those fucking Twelve children in the arena, too young to know better, for that pretentious prick Plutarch Heavensbee, who, if all this fails, will probably just go back to his cover as an assistant Gamesmaker and live out a quiet, comfortable life until the next chance arises, while she'll go back to sucking off Claudius Templesmith and his buddies until she's too old and used-up to be sold – that is, if she isn't killed or carted off to some top-secret personal torture chamber of President Snow or even just turned into an Avox, which come to think of it, would hardly be any fucking different than her life now; she would welcome the lack of whoring. 

Even Finnick Odair gets to have hope, because he's got fucking Annie Cresta, and he fucking loves her so much he's willing to one day sacrifice his very life to maybe give her a safe future. Hope is for people who can imagine a future. 

Johanna can only imagine a series of consecutive presents. 

So when Heavensbee talks about District 13 saving Panem, she sees how Finn leapt at the chance, without even thinking it through. 

Maybe Johanna just leaps at the chance for revenge. 

But she lets Finn put his arm around her in comfort anyway. He's good at that, even if Johanna thinks of sex with him every single fucking time he does it. These days, the memory of those two whole years where they saw each other during the Games and sat across from each other kissing and getting each other off because neither of them could stand having a person on top of them without the triggers kicking in comes and goes mercifully quickly now, in a flash of hurt scabbed over into dullness, even though she had always been the one who had insisted what they had was nothing but convenient. 

She watches Heavensbee trot into the room, talking at them even before he closes the distance between them. He's got that confident arrogance she had until recently thought only Capitolites possessed. He looks so authentically Capitol, in his long, flowing turquoise suit coat and the white ruffled collar, and the streaks of green and blue in what surely is a subtle wig. Finnick sits up and listens attentively to the man, but he doesn't take his arm away from around Jo's shoulder, and she takes her small enjoyment of that for what it is. It's not like she's bound to ever get anything better, especially now that the sleeping titans are about to awake. 

East and West are about to rise up, she thinks, each of them armed with nuclear weapons. If this goes anywhere real, it will probably be like the arena – a grand fight to the fucking death with one victor left. But who the hell knows what will be left standing for the young lovers, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, when all of this is over? 

It's a good thing that Johanna doesn't believe in hope.


End file.
